Peter Drucker used to say that management contained elements of both art and science - he thought of it as a "liberal art." Despite his pivotal status in the development management thinking, this put him rather at odds with the general current of 20th century work in the field, most of which focused on extending Frederick Winslow Taylor's efforts to develop a "Scientific" approach to management. The ideas of Drucker, Senge, Handy and other such systems-oriented thinkers may inspire people, but on balance they have probably had far less impact on the day-to-day operations of business (and certainly less prominence in MBA courses) than figures such as Shewhart and Deming, who developed Taylor's principles into a set of simple practices via which business people could organize their activities. Total Quality Management, Six Sigma and BPM all stem in the end from Deming's Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle.

PDCA bears only a peripheral relation to true science. It may employ a variant of the Scientific Method in its iterative approach to developing a useful process, but it can hardly be thought of as seeking to uncover any fundamental truths about the universe! However, let's stick with the analogy with science for a moment.

The first of the two books mentioned above is "Progress and the Invisible Hand: The Philosophy and Economics of Human Advance," by Richard Bronk. This work typifies a general trend in 20th century ideas about science. From the First World War onwards, disillusion with the potential of science grew and grew, reaching its apotheosis in Rachel Carson's 1962 polemic against DDT, "Silent Spring," which many people consider to have marked the start of the Green movement in politics. Bronk's book epitomizes this attitude, and is particularly wide-ranging. It's central thesis is that Enlightment thinkers were misguided - scientific control over nature, as expressed via the operation of a free market, has not in fact made us happier, and is unlikely ever to do so.

The second book, by contrast, is an impassioned defense of science. "Science and the Retreat from Reason," by John Gillott and Manjit Kumar, argues that any problems caused by science are simply due to misuse and misinterpretation. Rather than being our undoing, science has the potential to solve most evils, if only it were properly funded and its practitioners properly motivated.